اظهار العصر لأسرار اهل العصر

Clearly a musawwada copy with an extremely variable writing surface and extensive use of the margins. A later hand on the manuscript’s flyleaf notes that the first 159 folio’s contain a portion of al-Biqāʿī’s “ʿUnwān al-zamān” and are followed by a continuation of this text (dhayl) written by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Buṣrawī. At least as far as the first part is concerned, this is erroneous, as the “ʿUnwan al-zamān” is a biographical dictionary, which the excerpt found in this manuscript definitely is not. Instead, it is likely an as yet unedited and unknown part of al-Biqāʿī’s “Iẓhār al-ʿAṣr”. The part of the “Iẓhār al-ʿaṣr” that is copied deals with events from Shawwāl 871 / May 1467 to Rabīʿ I 879 / July-August 1474, just before al-Biqāʿī's departure from Cairo to Damascus. It contains many marginal notes and does not end on a colophon. The handwriting is very similar to that found in the presumed holograph manuscript Maktabat al-Shaykh ʿĀrif Ḥikmat 3789 in Medina which has been used as a basis for the work's (incomplete) edition. The latter text may be a version of the text circulating as “Tārīkh al-Buṣrawī” by ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Dimashqī al-ʿAtikī al-Shāfiʿī al-Buṣrawī (d. 905 / 1500). The part found here covers the years 872-894/1468-89, though not in a very detailed fashion, with the annals for some years only taking up one page and other years hardly containing any annals at all. On f.164a someone (the ink is similarly discolored to that of some of the Maghrebi notes on the title page) made a crude stick figure drawing of a man on a riding animal, and on f.190a an entire page has been crossed out. The manuscript clearly circulated either in the Maghreb or among Maghrebi agents, as the title page contains several (ownership and consultation) notes in Maghrebi script.